Weak side practice!

Bronze SupporterBronze Supporter

How many of you actually practice carrying & firing with your weak hand?

This became very clear to me this week... Long story short I found my self having emergency spinal surgery to remove a damaged disc in my neck (c5-6) which was compressing my spinal cord.
This compression greatly affected my right arm, neck and shoulder.

I now have a numbness/tingling in my right hand, especially the thumb as well as weakness in the arm and gripping ability in my hand.

Now that Im up moving around I found that carry became so much more difficult.

Last subgun match part of the course was weak hand only. Some of the guys have never in all their years tried shooting left handed but still managed to get the steel knocked down. It's always good to learn how to shoot with either hand should your good hand get disabled.

Silver SupporterSilver Supporter

Well had a injury a few years ago....could not rack the slide with my off hand.... off hand still has no trigger finger as it is messed up and just along for the ride....can rack it now but when it comes to off hand shooting.....I am not good at all

Silver SupporterSilver Supporter

How many of you actually practice carrying & firing with your weak hand?

This became very clear to me this week... Long story short I found my self having emergency spinal surgery to remove a damaged disc in my neck (c5-6) which was compressing my spinal cord.
This compression greatly affected my right arm, neck and shoulder.

I now have a numbness/tingling in my right hand, especially the thumb as well as weakness in the arm and gripping ability in my hand.

Now that Im up moving around I found that carry became so much more difficult.

Lesson learned... you never know when something is going to happen.

Click to expand...

I have done some shooting with the off hand but not really serious practice. I have been realizing that I do need to practice with that hand because it is messed up! Thinking that the best way to build it up for shooting is to shoot with it.
OP, I hope that your surgery is compleatly successful and you can go back to your strong hand soon! Good thread! SRG

Well-Known Member

When I was shooting PPC matches we used to add a "for fun" stage at the end shooting one of the stages over with the weak hand - in PPC generally the first stage was 6 rounds at 7' strong hand only so we started by adding the 7' weak hand at the end. After a few matches of that we went to some of the longer stages with the off hand as well. Good to learn to be at least somewhat proficient with the off hand just in case.

AK's all day.

I do however make it a point to always shoot right and left handed when I go out..
Carrying on my left side is a good idea as well.. It'd drive me nuts at first to constantly reach for it with my right hand and realize its on the other side.

Silver SupporterSilver SupporterBronze Supporter2017 Volunteer

I didn't think about it until I took a defensive handgun course last year at Oregon Firearms Academy (thumbs up for their training, BTW). We trained primarily strong-hand, but did get training on weak-side shooting, the first time I had ever done it. Now, when I go out to practice, I repeat some of the drills they taught us, but I do forget to do the weak-hand stuff. I need to work on that again.

Well-Known Member

[GLOAT]Being nominally left-handed, and left eye dominant, I mostly shoot with my so-called "weak side". However, living in a right-handed world forces me to use my "strong (right) side" for many things. I shoot right-handed regularly, and practice a drill in which I switch hands at each shot, or each double-tap, medium-rapid fire. If I take the time between shots, I trained myself to shift my eye dominance. [/GLOAT]

Well, this got right-side alignment that I can't undo. Maybe there is a message here for me.
​

Well-Known Member

I always practice off hand shooting. This was a habit taught to me in the Infantry.
Last June I broke my right arm and ended up in a wheelchair for three months with a major leg injury too. I found myself in a very vulnerable position and more than a little glad that I had maintained my training.
I set myself up with a cross draw system that worked.

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